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Oct. 18, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:21:23
Hamas Hospital Lie
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Dennis Prager here.
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Hi everybody, welcome to the Dennis Prager Show.
The hospital in Gaza issue is a very revealing one.
All evidence right now points to the fact that it was in fact a Palestinian rocket, not an Israeli hit that hit the, not even the hospital, but the parking lot of the hospital.
The odds are overwhelming that we are living with two spectacular lies.
One, that Israel hit a hospital.
Well, three.
Israel hit a hospital, killed 500 people, doctors, patients, visitors, etc.
And that, let's see, so that Israel did it.
They killed X number of people.
Yeah, those are the two big lies.
And it turns out that it was a Palestinian rocket, and it wasn't the hospital.
It was the parking lot of the hospital.
Nevertheless, people like Justin Trudeau has already condemned Israel.
The second Hamas announced something, which is par for the course for Justin Trudeau, Who is a Castro admirer.
The further left you get, the less truth is a factor.
Truth is not a left-wing value.
It is a liberal value and a conservative value.
Almost every day I get to say that.
And you are now seeing it.
The United Nations Secretary General condemned Israel for it.
Why do people believe Hamas?
If in World War II, the Nazis had made a statement and the Allies had made a counter-statement, would people assume that the Nazi statement was true and the Allies statement was a lie?
Why does the same common sense not apply today?
And there is an answer, because our moral compass is broken today.
That's why.
The left doesn't have a moral compass, and so it has done a lot of shattering elsewhere in the liberal world and in the world generally.
Israel not only has a video of the Islamic Jihad.
Isn't that, by the way, isn't that redundant?
Is there a non-Islamic Jihad?
Anyway, Islamic Jihad apparently fired the rocket.
It misfired and landed in the parking lot of a hospital.
But they never miss an opportunity to smear Israel.
And much of the world doesn't miss an opportunity to believe any smear about Israel.
Because the ache...
It's to show a moral equivalence between Israel and the Palestinians.
That's the ache.
Everybody knows that there is a universe, even people on the left know it.
They deny it to themselves and to the world.
But on a lie detector, if they were asked, If Hamas made a statement and the Israeli government made a statement and they were contradictory, which do you think is more likely to be true?
Almost anyone.
If there were repercussions for failing a lie detector test, almost anyone would acknowledge that it was far more likely that Israel I just recorded my An Hour with Megyn Kelly.
You can certainly watch that.
It'll be up today.
And the issue arose.
Why is this happening?
She was, to her great credit, she is quite concerned of the eruption of anti-Semitism.
In the United States, she put up videos of people tearing down posters, young people, posters of missing Israelis, in case anybody knows anything about them, in the West.
I think, in fact, at NYU and some other places.
And it's really something.
People are looking for...
Relatives who are probably dead or kidnapped.
And they tear that down.
There are people who tear down the posters.
But every time there is a person identified, it is with a name that comes from the Middle East.
That was my warning.
When so many people were so...
Advocative of bringing in vast numbers of people from the Middle East.
I said, you are importing Jew hatred.
You are importing West hatred.
There are some wonderful people who come in, but many people have the values of the Middle East.
Jew hatred, America hatred, Western civilization hatred.
And, of course...
It didn't matter.
Because people deny, they live in the make-believe world, in a make-believe world.
Everybody is like us.
That's what the naive in the West think.
There's no difference between us, just like there's no difference between men and women.
It's amazing the rejection of differences, cultural or sexual.
It's a make-believe world because they're uncomfortable with the fact that civilizations have different beliefs.
Just to say that Western civilization has been better than others is now deemed racist, as if there's a racial component to it.
What is the racial component?
The Nazis were white.
How could there be a racial component?
Was not Nazism a rejection of Western civilization?
There is no racial component.
There is a cultural, there is a moral component.
Yeah.
And so many Jews wanting to show how compassionate they were.
We're advocative.
Even some really prominent Jews.
Yes, bring in a million people into Europe from the Middle East.
Of course.
Doesn't the Bible say love the stranger?
Actually, it says love the resident alien.
The non-Israelite who lives among you.
You must love him because you were...
Like that, you were strangers like that in the land of Egypt.
So you should have empathy.
It doesn't mean you bring in people who want to destroy you in the millions.
That is not a biblical principle because the Bible isn't stupid.
The rejecters of the Bible tend to be stupid.
So there's another fascinating issue taking place.
This was a big theme of Megyn Kelly's.
About all these supporters of the universities that are now saying, don't give any money to the universities.
And I said, maybe that's the one bright spot of the horror of October 7th.
Maybe that there was an awakening among liberals, because these are all liberals.
There's awakening among liberals as to the cesspools that the universities have become and for which they have raised billions of dollars.
These naive, well-intentioned people, and you know what I think of good intentions, they are literally worthless.
So maybe there is an awakening.
But I did ask, and is not said with any resentment, I pray that they actually have awakened to how much money they have given to bad places called universities, destructive places, morally idiotic places.
But I'm just curious, when they said America was systemically racist, that wasn't a wake-up call?
When the University of Pennsylvania...
Forced the girls' swimming team to accept a man, a boy, as a member of the team.
And when he was naked in the locker room exposing his genitals to the girls, it was okay because he said he's a girl.
This is the University of Pennsylvania.
They put massive pressure on the female swimmers to accept him.
That was okay.
But now all of a sudden the universities...
Show their real temperament.
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And now, apparently, the United States has confirmed.
Now, that's interesting.
I am going to...
I got a challenge here, and I love when I'm challenged, because it forces me to review what I've said.
And I am going to...
Yeah, here we go.
So I have a caller who says that Trudeau was horrified but did not condemn Israel.
So I'm going to read what he said.
Maybe that's accurate.
Breitbart, Trudeau amongst firsts in rush to blame Israel for Gaza hospital blast.
Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was amongst the first to rush to blame Israel for a deadly explosion at the Ali...
Baptist Hospital in Gaza City.
In the hours afterwards, Trudeau reportedly called the situation absolutely unacceptable.
Speaking in French, he told reporters that it is not legal to bomb a hospital.
The news coming out of Gaza is horrific, the Prime Minister said.
Reuters reports, international humanitarian and international law needs to be respected.
In this and in all cases, there are rules around wars, and it's not acceptable to hit a hospital.
Sounds pretty clear to me.
It does?
It sounds clear to you?
All right, so now, having done that, let me go to Philadelphia and Peter.
Hi, Peter.
Hey, this is the statement.
It is imperative that innocent civilians be protected and international upheld.
Together we must determine what happened.
There must be accountability.
That was his official statement.
I'm no Justin Trudeau fan, but the truth is the truth.
That's what he said.
He didn't mention Israel.
And I was wondering...
Wait, wait, wait.
So what I... Okay, I believe what you read.
Why don't you believe what I read?
I don't know if I do.
Of course, I don't speak French.
Of course, that's what he said.
But he never mentioned Israel in any of those statements that you read either.
You don't think he's referring to Israel?
You know, he did not mention Israel.
It's not acceptable to hit a hospital.
He was not referring to Israel.
All right, okay.
Listen, I hope you're right.
Guess what?
I give you my word.
I hope you're right.
That he wasn't referring to Israel.
That he was just making an interesting observation about war.
That it's inadmissible to hit a hospital.
Okay.
I'll leave it at that.
Let the listeners decide.
Thank you.
This is what the Secretary General of the United Nations tweeted.
I am horrified by the killing of hundreds of Palestinian civilians in a strike on a hospital in Gaza today, which I strongly condemn.
My heart is with the families of the victims.
Hospitals and medical personnel are protected under international humanitarian law.
So again, He doesn't mention Israel.
Who is he referring to?
So, we can't live in denial of realities.
Of course he's referring to Israel.
Anyway, he didn't make this statement when Israeli hospitals were hit by Palestinian rockets.
In fact, nobody even bothered noting it.
Well, more is coming out now, including from the United States.
Let me give you that detail.
This is late-breaking.
And this is from the New York Times.
Early intelligence suggests hospital blast caused by Palestinian group, U.S. says.
Hmm.
American officials say they have multiple strands of intelligence, including infrared satellite data, indicating that the deadly blast at a Gaza hospital on Tuesday was caused by an armed Palestinian group.
But it won't matter.
Throughout the Arab world, Israel will be blamed.
The truth won't matter.
The road to hell is paved by lies.
I have always known this.
I have always said this.
Truth does set you free.
That's why I've been on radio for 40 years.
To the best of my human ability, I have pursued truth.
I'll just give you an example, which is...
Which may even surprise you how adamant I am about that.
Since I have not seen a picture of a decapitated Israeli baby, I have not reported that babies were decapitated.
That's a pretty high standard of truth that I try to abide by.
By the way, you don't need that atrocity in order to know the horrors of what they did.
On October 7th.
The burning people alive seems to be confirmed.
Killing whole families.
I can't get that out of my mind.
There isn't a day since that Saturday that I have not thought about, let's say, grandparents whose child, who the wife or husband of their child, And their grandchildren are no longer alive in one fell swoop.
That is a loss of Holocaustian dimensions, because one of the things that we say about it, their whole family was murdered.
That's what happened then.
But my original point was that truth is everything.
It is inconceivable that Israel would target a hospital.
Inconceivable.
But it is conceivable that Hamas operatives would operate from a hospital.
And then, what if rockets are sent to kill Israelis from a hospital?
What does Israel do?
I don't know the answer, but it is a moral, unworthy question.
But it isn't what happened.
We shall return.
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Of course it turns out that it's not Israel.
Even the New York Times, even the less-than-supportive of Israel State Department has acknowledged that fact.
But they'll continue to lie, and the universities will continue to have its Islamic organizations, Students for Justice in Palestine, a Nazi group.
Let me repeat that.
It is indistinguishable with regard to Jews from the Nazis.
Okay?
So that they exist on so many campuses is a reason to have concern about the influence of the pro-Palestinian groups on Jew hatred in the United States of America.
It is the first group to be imported into the United States that is purely anti-Semitic.
They would like the Jews wiped out in Israel.
Wiped out.
They don't even use the term Israeli.
They use Jew.
Gas the Jews!
You saw that chant at the Sydney Opera House?
Yeah.
Of course, the left was delighted to have as many people from Muslim countries come in as possible because the left thought there's not enough anti-Semitism in the United States.
So we need to import Jew hatred.
Exterminate Israel believers.
And they did a good job.
And if you said that this was a danger, you were called Islamophobic.
Because the left never asks, is it true?
They ask, how can we smear the person who said it?
They don't ask, is it true?
American officials say they have multiple strands of intelligence, including infrared satellite data, ISD. I made that up.
I gotcha.
I'll bet you thought there was an initial there, right?
Indicating that the deadly blast at a Gaza hospital on Tuesday yesterday was caused by an armed Palestinian group.
The intelligence includes satellite and other infrared data showing a launch of a rocket or missile from Palestinian fighter positions within Gaza.
American intelligence agencies have also analyzed open-source video of the launch, showing that it did not come from the direction of Israeli military positions.
Ha!
What do you say?
Israeli officials have also provided the United States with intercepts of Hamas officials, saying the strike came from forces aligned with Palestinian militant groups.
Actually heard it.
You can hear it.
It is on the internet.
Do you know that?
Do we have that?
Because obviously you have to show me the English subtitles.
I know that.
I know.
I'm saying if we play it, it has to be played with the video.
Because the number of people who are fluent in Arabic listening is small.
I am not among those who understand the Arabic.
I can read Arabic, but I can't understand conversationally.
While we continue to collect information, our current assessment based on analysis of overhead imagery intercepts and open source information is that Israel is not responsible for the explosion at the hospital in Gaza yesterday, said Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council.
President Biden said, based on what I've seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you.
I'm grateful for his visit.
I'm grateful for his statements.
I want that clear.
I just have to note, it's an odd characterization of genocidal, homicidal sadists.
The other team.
It's not even a criticism.
I have plenty of criticism of this president.
It just strikes me as an odd phrase to use when you have an existential battle.
But anyway, it's not something I will dwell on.
But he's acknowledging this.
That's a big deal.
A senior Defense Department official said based on the launch data collected by infrared sensors, the United States was fairly confident the launch did not come from Israeli forces.
We'll see what the pro-Palestinian groups in America have to say about that.
The case for owning gold and silver, unfortunately, is slam dunk with the weakening of the dollar.
Look, I have advocated this all of my broadcast career.
Had people listened in the early days, they would have done well.
But I don't even advocate it primarily because it will go up in value.
It fluctuates, gold and silver, as everyone knows.
I advocate it because I worry about the dollar and because in times of emergency, that may not be as effective as owning gold and silver.
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I mention the man even though the company is the advertiser.
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AmericanFederal.com Well, I think people are aware of how much I admire The Daily Wire, one of the great forces for good in the Western world at this time.
The co-founder of it is Jeremy Boring, a man for whom I have immense respect and affection.
And he has a huge announcement.
Right before we went on, he said it is the biggest venture that Daily Wire has gone into as of yet.
I didn't know that.
I knew about the venture, but I'm going to let him tell you.
Jeremy is in Eastern Europe right now.
We'll talk about that too.
I'm very curious how the news from the Middle East is received in that part of the world.
But Jeremy Boring, can we say where you are?
Indeed.
I'm in Dubrovnik in Croatia.
Well, I'll tell you this.
If you've got to work somewhere out of the U.S., I must say Dubrovnik is a really nice place to be.
It is truly beautiful.
I'm here because of these very peculiar rules around working out of the country and being an executive at the Daily Wire.
I've had to take a leave of absence in order to do the work that I'm doing.
And for certain things, promoting the company or other kinds of events, I actually have to leave even the countries that I'm working in now.
So I never expected to find myself in Dubrovnik, but I'm just blown away by its beauty.
It's a wonderful place.
It certainly is.
And your friend and my friend Alan Estrin is nodding, which is a passionate response if you know Alan well.
You really touched him with that.
I remember one of the things I remember about Dubrovnik is how delicious the fish was.
Indeed.
Yeah, because of course it's on the sea.
Okay, so what is the truly big and important announcement you have?
So we've launched a new company.
A little over a year ago, these tapes leaked from inside Disney.
Chris Ruffo, the journalist, brought them to light.
And they were executives within Disney and producers within Disney talking about their desire to change the company.
They had a lot of ways they wanted to do it.
One of them is to have more than 50% of their on-screen characters be from quote-unquote marginalized communities.
But in this conversation, it came out that producers were putting a quote-unquote not-so-secret gay agenda into their kids' entertainment, that they were trying to insert queerness into all of their kids' entertainment, that there was radical racial politics going into their kids' entertainment.
And it struck me that morning, Ben called me, Ben Shapiro, and said, hey...
Have you heard this news out of Disney?
I said, yeah, I'm seeing it right now.
He said, we have to do something about this.
Nothing is more important than the culture in which we raise children.
It's far more important than the political work that we do, far more important than the news journalism work that we do.
We have to make a stand against this.
And I said, Ben, you're crazy.
That's far bigger than anything we could ever undertake.
By 4 o'clock that afternoon, I announced to the world that we were going to spend $100 million over three years and launch into children's entertainment.
And that's what we did on the 100th anniversary of the day that Walt Disney founded his company, October 16th.
We launched our new company called Bent Key.
And Bent Key is a beautiful, wonderful world for children.
It's not political overtly.
We are political, right?
The act of launching it.
Is obviously political, but the content is not political.
It's not educational.
It is truly entertainment.
It's the kind of entertainment that we all had the luxury of growing up with, entertainment that encouraged us to have imagination, a sense of wonder, a sense of adventure, a sense of joy, and a sense of values, but didn't treat us as political props.
You know, turned us into the people.
It gave us the opportunity to develop the character on which politics would be built later.
That's what we're trying to reclaim with this new venture, Bent Key.
Spell Bent Key.
B-E-N-T-K-E-Y. The company is named for the Bent Key that I've been wearing around my neck for the last 28 years.
Is that right?
Obviously, I was wondering how you got that name.
So, Bent Key.
So, Bent Key will be producing what I remember was watching, for example, Fantasyland or the various lands, Adventureland, on TV. So TV is not the same as it was then.
Now we have the internet.
Is that one of the things you'll be doing?
Yes, absolutely.
We have right now on the app over 100 episodes of over 18 distinct series.
Five of those are Bent Key Originals, shows that we created and produced.
The others are shows that we've licensed from around the world.
We have a team who reviews every single episode to make sure that, at a minimum, It's highly entertaining and doesn't insult or betray the values of our core audience.
And at a maximum, it actually inculcates very positive values while also being highly hilarious, highly entertaining, beautiful.
So there are these two distinct content types, the original stuff and the licensed stuff.
All of them are things that people can feel very safe putting their kids in front of.
You know, there's a lot of wonderful kids' content out there, some of it produced by companies like Disney over the last century.
The real problem is that if you put your kid in front of Disney's content on, say, Disney +, if you put them in front of a beautiful piece of content on YouTube, you can't trust what they're going to see next on that platform.
It's almost as if Disney's legacy content, the content that they use to build such goodwill and such trust with audiences for the last 100 years, is now bait to bring kids in to then show them an episode of Proud Family where they're taught that...
That America is systemically racist and that we should pay reparations to everyone who has to live in this systemically racist hellhole called America.
That's content they're making for children.
That's what we're trying to stand against.
Wow.
An alternative to Disney.
What a monumental task.
But if anybody could do it, it's The Daily Wire.
And if anybody, The Daily Wire, could do it, it's Jeremy Boring.
My producer, not Alan, but in this case, the technical producer, in my headphones said, would you please ask him why he wears a bent key?
The short answer is that it's the key to a small regional theater in the town of Post, Texas, which was founded by the serial magnate C.W. Post, where I grew up doing theater and had my first taste of responsibility.
I was a teenager at the time, my first taste of adult camaraderie, and where I suppose I developed my political and religious and philosophical beliefs where I discovered who I am.
And so there's more to the story that requires cigars and bourbon and conversation late into the evening, but that's the critical part, that Benke to me represents giving young people the opportunity.
To discover who they are.
Okay, so please stay on with me, but right now, what should somebody listening do?
Go to what address?
Yes, you can go to bentkey.com.
You can go to any app store.
We have apps on, obviously, iOS, on Roku, anywhere where you watch content.
We'll continue with Jeremy Boring, co-founder of Daily Wire.
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Yes, yes, yes, go on, go on.
Hi everybody, Dennis Prager here.
This is the Male Female Hour every Wednesday, the second hour of my show, or my program, devoted to the most honest talk I know of in the American media about men and women.
And to repeat, I am not a man fan, and I am not a woman fan.
I am a good person fan.
There are a lot of...
Wonderful men, a lot of wonderful women, a lot of awful men, and a lot of awful women.
And such it has always been, and so it is today.
All right, so today's subject is one that I don't have a full answer to.
I have some, and they may all be wrong, by the way.
But it's one of my shows, one of my hours, where I hear what people have to say as much as people have to hear or hear what I have to say.
Thank you.
And it is not possible to overstate how much I have learned by doing these hours.
How many people who write books, for example, have the input?
Of thousands upon thousands.
I mean, there are millions who listen, but obviously millions can't get to speak.
That's really been a great advantage that I've had.
Well then, here's the question.
Most of you know how advocative I am of marriage.
One of my favorite hours was having you react to the following proposition, which I believe that it is better to marry or to have been married and divorced than never to have been married.
That was a very interesting hour, and I will also never forget the woman who called and disagreed with me.
And then I asked her, I think that she was, I don't know, her late 30s or just turned 40, and was looking to get married.
So I asked her, if I had two 50-year-old men, and the only thing you knew about the two was one had been married and divorced, And the other had never been married.
You could only date one in looking for a husband.
Which would you date?
And that great moment on radio when I hear, oh, or uh-huh.
And that was the end of the conversation.
So in fact, she agreed with me.
It is better to have been married and divorced than never to have been married.
There are many reasons for that, but that's not my subject.
It's related, but it's not my subject.
My subject is, why do so many people today fear getting married?
Why do men and why do women?
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God, I meet young people, and I'm not even talking about 18 or even 25. It doesn't even matter.
In their 30s.
And they say, you know, I'm not ready to get married.
I want to get my finances and my professional life ordered and so on.
And I must say, I don't even understand it.
Forget that I don't agree with it.
I don't understand it.
For all the generations preceding this one, did they all have their financial and career futures laid out?
When my parents married, they were 22 and 21 years old, respectively.
You think my father had his finances all, what is it, ducks in a row?
Is that the phrase?
What the hell does that mean?
Oh, if you shoot ducks?
Is that it?
I didn't come from a hunting family.
Yes, he got married and then he worked out his finances, which is exactly right.
What's the difference if you work them out when you're single or work them out when you're married?
By the way, certainly vis-a-vis a man, you're far more likely to earn more money if you're married than if you're single.
Married men, what is it they say about the gallows?
It concentrates a man's mind.
Marriage concentrates a man's mind.
He doesn't spend as much time at sports bars once he gets married.
So back to my question, why do so many, especially young people, fear marriage?
At this point, the most Americans in American history at the age of 40 have never been married.
25%.
of people 40 and under have never been married.
Oh, the etymology of ducks and rows, nothing to do with hunting.
Oh, it's about how that's, yeah, that's true.
Ducks go in a line like that.
Yeah, that's a good point with the babies following the mom.
Sean knows about that because this may...
You may find this strange.
He was a duck in his previous life.
And The Ugly Duckling was his favorite book.
In fact, that's the name of his autobiography.
Now you prefer my Bible commentary to The Ugly Duckling.
I'm very touched.
1-8 Prager 776. Yes, I gotta get everything ready first.
Or the other one, or another one, isn't the other one, that I have heard is, you know, I don't want to get divorced.
That's very common.
I don't want to get divorced, so I fear getting married.
So I've always had a response to that.
Do you drive a car?
Why don't you fear?
Having a crash.
I liken divorce to a bad car crash.
You survive.
A lot of pain, a lot of loss of money, potentially, anyway.
But never to drive because you fear that you'll be in a crash.
Or those who say, I saw my parents' divorce.
Hey, hey.
I don't want to end up that way.
To which I've always asked, if your parents were in a bad car crash, would you not drive?
So you have to tell me, what do you think?
Oh, there is another one.
Men fear divorce, and specifically the ramifications financially.
Which, by the way, is not stupid.
Family courts are not set up to protect.
Anybody?
You see, I came to a conclusion about family courts.
They don't favor women as much as they favor the irresponsible party.
I would say that in family courts, most of the time, the good spouse is hurt, whether vis-a-vis children or vis-a-vis money.
So I have sympathy for the argument that, oh, I fear divorce in terms of the legal ramifications, specifically financial.
Okay, it's not a reason not to get married in my opinion, but I can't deny that there is some validity to the fear.
But otherwise?
It's like not having children because you fear having children.
You know how many people have painful relations with their children?
Or something terrible happened to the child?
back in a moment.
Okay, the question on the male-female hour, why do so many young people fear marriage?
you And I don't only mean young as in 18 or even 25. 35. And maybe even older.
Why are they fearing marriage?
Okay, let's go to Meryl in Medford, New Jersey.
This is the Meryl of Medford.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi again.
I think it's because of during all of these younger people, I'm in my early, early 60s, but don't tell anybody.
I'm kidding.
The highest divorce rates occurred during these kids, people under 40s, their formative years.
If it hasn't been their own parents divorcing, they've probably been privy to seeing their friends' lives just totally disrupted by the breakup of their parents.
Devastation in their friends or their family, the hostilities of the parents.
They see what their mothers have to go through just to put food on the table, pay electricity, the rent, to stay afloat.
They don't get to see their moms as much because usually the kids were with the mothers during their formative years.
I know that's changing a lot in the last few decades.
All right, so you're saying what I offered, and you said it well, and I thank you, that they fear, they've seen divorce, they've seen really sad situations come from divorce, and so they fear getting married.
I think my car crash analogy is very close to perfect.
Why won't you drive?
Are you aware, sir, of all the people who've been paralyzed, maimed, brain damaged, and killed as a result of driving?
Why isn't that applicable?
What percentage of married people got divorced?
It's always disputed, but let's say 40%.
Some say 30, some say 50. I don't have any idea.
But I think, let's say, 4 out of 10 marriages end in divorce.
I mean, that is the way I wish, I assume, not I wish, that I assume that it is measured.
So have 4 out of 10 drivers in the course of their lifetime been in a serious crash?
I suspect so.
So I think the analogy is fine.
I won't do something because of the potential price I will pay.
Then let me tell you something, folks.
You certainly shouldn't have children.
The number of people who have a disappointing child because either the child is a disappointment or something bad happens to the child in terms, for example, of a disease.
Or, God forbid, they die.
I mean, when you have a child, you have a real chance, no matter how good a parent you are, and there are no perfect parents, you have a real chance of pain.
So why not apply it to having children?
And by the way, it may in fact be, because a lot of people are not having children.
So, because of fear of calamity, all these wonderful things that people could have in life, the richest things possible, they deny themselves.
The purpose of life is not to go through it without pain.
The purpose of life is to go through it with as much richness as possible.
Okay, let's see here.
Where are we?
Chicago!
And Christine, hello.
Hi, it's an honor and a pleasure.
Thank you.
And I want to know, I totally agree with you.
It's better to do it than you always get the residuals.
I totally agree.
Just like a driver's license.
How do you feel about the term marriage material?
Because I think, I know people who have never been married.
And even if the marriage would have failed, you can tell how they lament, secretly or on post or whatever, that they never, like, somebody never proposed to them.
Oh yeah, no.
So, you're absolutely right, and how does that apply to my question?
I'm saying it's better to have been married, because your original question...
Because then at least you know that somebody wanted you?
Well, I just think there's people out there.
My mom used to say anybody can get married if you set your threshold up.
So some girls in my mother's era, the 50s, they wanted to get married.
It didn't matter who it was.
The goal was to get married.
Yeah.
That's right.
By the way, I'm not sure that that's a bad goal.
The contempt that the elite...
Have for that as a goal.
Oh, she went to college to get an MRS. I'm sure many of you never heard that.
It's a very old phrase.
But I never thought it was a laugh-worthy comment.
If a girl goes to college to get an MRS, let me ask you something.
What do you think in the long run will bring her a better life?
An MRS or an MA? The good stuff that's been laughed at.
We return Male Female Hour.
We return Male Male Hour.
Sky blue eyes, a big white smile and tall as a sycamore tree.
He's real smart with a real big heart and he's gonna marry me.
Yes, indeed.
I'm Dennis Prager.
This is the Male Female Hour.
Why do so many young people fear marriage?
I'll throw out another theory for you.
It's related to what I've said but I didn't say it quite this way.
They fear pain.
That's why.
That's right.
There might be pain in marriage.
That's right.
There might be pain in having children.
That's right.
And the goal is as pain-free a life as possible.
I read about this all the time.
All these articles, single women writing, oh my god, I just do what I want when I want.
Yeah.
You can't do what you want when you want quite as much.
You can still do it a lot, but you can't do it as much.
Once you're married, there's another human being to consider.
And they have not been raised.
To think like that.
So, they miss out on a big deal.
In fact, John in Louisville, Louisville, has this exact thought, I think.
Let's find out.
John, hello.
Hello, Dennis.
My observation is quite simply that with the backdrop, Of a culture that no longer touts family values of any sort.
What we have found ourselves in is a society as a whole that is immature.
A society that touts self-centeredness.
And then that, of course, lends itself to a lack of commitment.
And you could take that lack of commitment and use that in, you know, marriage.
You could even use that in the workplace.
I mean, people are bouncing around from job to job.
It's just a completely different society.
Yeah, I agree.
I agree.
That's an excellent way of saying what I was saying just before I took your call.
The easy way out is the best way out.
Commitment?
Yeah, it's not...
It's sort of the C word.
Commitment.
Everything good takes commitment.
Religion takes commitment.
Family does.
Marriage, kids, job.
There's a price paid for the coddling.
Of the last two generations.
Their price is paid.
This is one of them.
All right.
Let's see.
That's an interesting one.
William in Eastleigh, South Carolina.
Hello.
How you doing, sir?
Well.
So, on the topic...
On why people are not getting married, I think one of the biggest things that I have observed in my personal life and my friends is the lack of an example.
And with that being said, my mom's on her third marriage and my father is on his third marriage.
My in-laws have been together since high school, just like my wife and I. And we've been happily married for, I guess...
Yeah, 13 years now.
And we got married at 24 years old.
So he was my idol.
You know, the person that I could look up to and see how marriage can work and be best for my life and for my wife.
You mean you're talking about your father?
My father-in-law.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Your father-in-law.
Okay.
Because, oh, he's been married since high school.
Right, but you married, obviously, prior to, I mean, you knew him, but he wasn't your model until you met his daughter.
Which we were about 15 when we met.
Right, but I assume, okay, good.
So even at a young age, I assume you were committed to getting married.
Yes.
So that's not because of your father-in-law.
That's a good point.
Okay, you're a good man.
I love that.
It's one of the highlights of my radio career.
It means it's a credit to you.
It is a good point.
You're committed to marriage.
Hi, everybody.
Dennis Prager here. - Sure.
Periodically, I will say to a guest that I have on, you know, we must do a part two.
And I think, understandably even, a lot of people listening think it's just a nice way of my saying, I really enjoyed you.
But if I say that, I almost always mean it.
I think I always mean it, but I'll use the word almost.
And I certainly meant it with a recent guest, Mark Halperin.
H-E-L-P-R-I-N, who is with the Claremont Institute and is, according to my producer, the finest novelist writing in English today.
But he is also known, to me especially, as a thinker on strategic, military, political, international political matters and the like.
So Mark Helperin is back, as it were, for a part two.
His latest book was just published, and it is another one of his magnificent novels, titled The Oceans and the Stars, A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story.
It's up at DennisPrager.com, by the way.
So let me begin with you, Mark.
I believe you were on prior to the horror of October 7th, correct?
7th, yes.
I had thought we were going to speak about China, but as Ilhan Omar said, some people did something.
That's the way she put it?
Some people did something?
Some people did something.
She made that comment about September 11th.
Oh yeah, that's right.
That's correct.
I now recall that.
So, the latest is that even the U.S. government has acknowledged it is overwhelmingly likely that whatever damage was done to a Palestinian Gaza hospital was done by Palestinian rockets, not by an Israeli attack.
That's correct.
And by the way, if you look at the drone, actually, I don't like to say drone, but it's unmanned aerial vehicle imagery, which the Israelis have provided, you can see why.
They presented a detailed case showing that it was actually a failed missile launch from a parking lot and cemetery next to the hospital.
And also they intercepted communications between two Hamas operatives in which they expressed shock and surprise that it was a Palestinian Islamic Jihad missile that misfired and hit the hospital.
To me, with my background and intelligence, it's a very convincing case that it was not the Israelis.
And also, of course, there's a question of cui bono.
Which means, who benefits?
It's absolutely against Israel's interest to have done that.
Although I suppose you could say it was a mistake and that they didn't intend to.
But it is in the interest of Hamas and against the interest of Israel to have had that hospital bombed.
It's in the interest of Hamas because there is so much lying that pervades The international reporting and our universities.
It wouldn't be in their interest if the truth came out that it was in fact they who had done it.
So, am I not correct in inferring from your statement Hamas relies on a lying universe?
Of course.
And also, one of the objects of this whole thing was to excite the Arab world and get it to unify against Israel as has happened in 48 and 56 and 67 and 73 and to do this you have to gin up anger horror and resentment and in the Arab world one believes because of the the tradition of Islam which does not have much
much there's not much objectivity in it As a religion and a culture, you believe what you want to believe.
If you believe it very, very strongly, then it's true.
And if you want to believe it, and you believe it strongly, it's absolutely true.
So this is in their interest in that dimension, in the Arab world's dimension, and also in the rest of the world, in Europe, in the United States, for people who would like to believe that Israel is demonic.
Do you have any idea if a news outlet such as the BBC is reporting as widely as the American press is that this was probably done by Palestinians and not the Israelis?
I don't know.
I haven't seen the BBC's reporting, but I can tell you that the BBC is highly prejudiced against Israel and has been for a very, very long time.
It may even have started.
In the Mandate era, when the British were in Palestine and the Jews were actually fighting the British and blowing up the King David Hotel, for example, which they gave warning, by the way, that they said it's going to blow up, get people out.
But the BBC is not a friend of Israel or, and it doesn't matter if it's a friend or not, it doesn't generally conform to the truth.
Vis-a-vis Israel.
Well, I remember vaguely but distinctly years ago, and I reported on it extensively, they reported on a massacre, I think in Janine, that never took place.
Does that ring a bell with you?
No.
I'm going to look it up.
That's the kind of thing they do.
Yes.
No, so that's why I asked you.
I was just curious.
I am curious.
I'm going to follow the BBC now, and I'll be curious if the CBC in Canada.
I remember that the Prime Minister Harper said to me at a PragerU gala that he spoke at, and he said, I just want you to know the CBC is worse than CNN. And I think that's true.
Yeah.
How about the New York Times?
The New York Times is astounding.
I mean, of course, the New York Times, you expect that from them in that they essentially covered up the Stalinist crimes.
You know, Walter Durante, who was the correspondent, wrote back that everything was terrific in Ukraine as millions of people being starved to death.
And they reported on the Holocaust very, very late, and they really didn't want to.
The times run by German Jews who were ashamed of Russian Jews and wanted to distance themselves from the Jewish rabble who were being exterminated in Europe.
Yeah, of course, German Jews were exterminated too, but that's beside the point.
Yes, their record in that regard is not good.
I'd like you to react to what I have been saying, which is that at this moment is a rare moment of clarity.
By any means for the world, but for a certain segment of Americans who had naively believed that basically it's the Palestinians' desire for a state versus the Jews' desire for a state.
And if we could just compromise, that's the only problem between them is a land problem.
And I have been saying all of my life, no, it's not a land problem.
One side wants the other side dead.
Am I overstating it?
How do you react?
I don't think you're overstating it.
At least, it's come to this pass over the last hundred years, when more or less, have you ever heard of an Islamic concept called, well, it looks like DIMI, D-H-I-N-I? Yeah, of course, yeah.
The Christians and Jews, because they're people of the book, But they're supposed to be kept down, not killed.
Right.
In Arabic, it's pronounced thommi.
But what it means is, Christians and Jews have to be subservient to Muslims.
For instance, a Muslim can kill a Jew or a Christian, and there's no problem.
These synagogues or churches have to be lower than mosques in height.
Jews couldn't ride a horse, they had to ride a donkey.
That kind of thing.
This is deeply entrenched.
In Islamic theology and in Islamic culture.
And when the Jews were in, the Jews have always been in Palestine, but when they began to immigrate en masse, the Arabs said, well, you really shouldn't be here.
And they've been trying to throw the Jews out.
Since the Jews more or less asserted themselves with the rise of Zionism.
We're going to continue in a moment.
Mark Helperin is my guest.
His latest novel is up at DennisPrager.com.
Dennis Prager here with...
A truly significant thinker, Mark Halperin, who I've been reading much of my life.
He's with the Claremont Institute, and he's a major novelist.
His latest novel is up at dennisprager.com.
Alan Estrin thinks he should get the Nobel Prize.
However, if he got the Nobel Prize, I would be suspicious.
That's the sad part.
Mark Helperin, ironically, your novel involves a Middle Eastern war, doesn't it?
Yes, it does, and it involves the taking of hundreds of hostages and their rescue.
And, of course, I started writing this a couple of years ago, maybe three or four years ago, and it's a very unfortunate coincidence that it's happening in real life now.
But the last thing I want to do, would want to do, is to have the sales of the book skyrocket because of that.
It's not something I want to take advantage of.
But Dennis, may I present, may I sort of cut to the chase and talk about Israel and what may come?
Please.
Okay.
The big question is, will Hezbollah Come in with its 150,000 rockets and Israel is extremely vulnerable.
You can't protect oil refineries and the nuclear base in Dimona and the Tel Aviv and Jerusalem city skyscrapers, military bases, etc.
from all these rockets because Israel does not have enough air defense, you know, Iron Dome, David's Sling, etc.
To do that.
So they would suffer immense damage if Hezbollah shoots its wand and comes in fully.
The second question is, will the West Bank rise to the extent that it can rise?
The third question is, will Iran use its intermediate-range ballistic missiles to target Israel, which would also be a lot of tremendous damage.
And the fourth one is, will other Arab states actually...
Come in, in various ways.
Of course, it depends upon the distance from Israel, it depends upon their internal politics, and it depends upon the situation.
So, the first thing is, these peripheral people who were very strong, like Hezbollah and Iran, and even in Israel, rising on the West Bank, or Arabs in Israel, it's a tremendous group of They're
looking to see what's happening in Gaza.
Israel has mobilized Israel has an army, an air force, etc., the Israel Defense Forces, in which, by the way, you know I served both in the infantry and the air force.
About 670,000 people, and all but 100,000 have now been mobilized.
They're pointed toward Gaza, although there's a big reserve in the north for Hezbollah.
I think that Hezbollah is going to say, if Israel bogs down in Gaza, which it could, it has before.
If there's a real problem for Israel and Gaza, then it would be economical for Hezbollah to come in and possibly safe, and possibly Iran, possibly the West Bank rising, etc.
Israel now, people may think that there's no possibility of an existential crisis in Israel.
But there is, because of these other powers that are arrayed upon its periphery, which could come in.
And that's what we have to watch.
We have to watch to see.
How it does, how Israel does in Gaza, because, again, if it gets bogged down, that's going to stimulate those other people to take advantage.
It's almost like a feeding frenzy.
And it's happened before.
In 1967, it happened when Nasser closed off the Straits of Tehran and mobilized his forces and got on the Israeli border and forced Israel to shut down because it mobilized the whole country.
They couldn't exist for more than...
Two or three weeks with everyone facing the Egyptian forces.
Then all the other Arab states felt blood in the water, the potential blood in the water.
And this could happen now, again, with Hezbollah, the strongest opponent on the periphery at the moment, the internal risings, and even Iran sending IRBMs and other Arab states possibly running in to join the fray.
That's what I'm afraid of.
That's what we have to keep our eyes on at the moment.
It's a very fraught situation.
It's not just Israel with a huge army facing Gaza, which has not much of an army, but just irregulars.
That's not just what it is.
Okay.
I agree with every word, and I've had the same fears.
So let's analyze that.
Why hasn't Hezbollah entered?
That, to me, is a bigger question than will they think it's an opportune time if Israel gets bogged down.
Israel is bogged down right now.
Why hasn't Hezbollah sent its 150,000 rockets?
It's not bogged down.
It's not bogged down now because they haven't entered Gaza yet.
And haven't run into any possible frustrations, high casualties, world condemnation.
Of course, world condemnation has already started, but they haven't run into that big problem of losing a lot of soldiers, people at home being distressed, possibly whatever military movements they make being frustrated, time.
Because, you see, Israel can't stay at war for too long because it mobilizes most of its civilian workers, in effect.
The country shuts down.
Hezbollah hasn't entered because it's watching.
It's watching to see if it would be opportune to enter.
All right, hold on there.
We're going to pursue that.
This is urgent to get through this issue.
Dennis Prager here with Mark Helperin, Senior Fellow at the Claremont Institute and author of magnificent novels.
His latest is up at DennisPrager.com and its title, let me get it exactly right, it is a long title, The Oceans and the Stars, A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story, The Oceans and the Stars.
Talking about the Middle East.
And we see these things really the same.
And I don't know why anybody wouldn't to understand the threat that is coming to Israel, which I want to talk about as well, the larger issue of this, a Jew called correctly existential.
So you're saying that Hezbollah is waiting to see...
Is waiting for a fortuitous moment to unleash all or many of its 150,000 rockets on Israel.
Is that correct?
Yes.
And also, keep in mind that Hezbollah is going to do what Iran tells it to do.
Now, in 2006, Hezbollah, Nasrallah, who was the head of it, claimed victory.
In that war that it fought with Israel in 2006, but it actually got creamed tremendously.
And that's why since 2006, then to now, which is 17 years, they haven't attacked Israel.
So nonetheless, they're afraid.
They're afraid because Israel in that time has also beefed up its strategies and its forces, and it will lay waste to southern Lebanon, and that will be the end of Hezbollah if Hezbollah does come in.
So they are waiting for the final battle because, and by the way, it's not their determination.
They will do what Iran tells them to do, even though they will risk.
Getting very badly beaten by Israel.
They will do what Iran tells them to do, because without Iran, they're nothing.
They would disappear.
And Iran doesn't have the same fear that, for instance, even Nasrallah might fear, because they're not directly involved in it.
And also, they like to be martyrs.
So they wouldn't care anyway, even if they were right on the spot.
But they've surrounded Israel.
Hezbollah has people in Syria.
It's possible that Syria could also come in.
They've made a network of agents in the West Bank, and maybe even some Arabs in Israel.
Hezbollah is just waiting for Iran's instructions, and it will be, as you say, opportune.
If they think, well, maybe this is it, maybe this is the final battle, they think in terms of the final battle, the destruction of Israel, then they would come in.
They're just waiting, Dennis, and they want to see what happens in Gaza.
So in light of that, I have another thought that I'd like to bounce off you.
It would seem to me...
That there's a good chance that Israel has sent a message to Tehran that if Hezbollah attacks, Israel will attack Iran.
Is that far-fetched?
No, it's not far-fetched at all.
And Israel attacking Iran really means one thing.
I mean, it's not going to invade Iran via land or sea amphibiously or anything.
It doesn't have vaguely the capacity to do that.
It means one thing.
It means taking out Iran's nuclear facilities, its nuclear infrastructure.
And that's something that Israel is going to have to do eventually anyway.
It will have to do that.
If the United States doesn't do it, and it's not likely that the United States would do it because of the internal politics of the United States, this current administration.
I think, by the way, that George W. Bush, the biggest mistake that he made was not getting rid of the Iranian nuclear program right before he left office.
It would have been a great gift to the United States, to the world, to Israel, and even to the Iranian people.
But Israel attacking Iran means eliminating Iran's nuclear capacity.
That's the most important thing, really, on the board right now.
It has been for years.
It will be for years until it's done.
But yes, I think Iran knows that if it encourages Hezbollah and its other agents in the area to join in in a war against Israel.
That Israel will then move to attack Iran.
Now, if it did so, and by the way, it can do so, it can eliminate the Iranian nuclear establishment totally, but it would be risking the life of the state because it would have to send most of its air force over Saudi Arabia, assuming Saudi Arabia still gives it, and I think it would at this point vis-a-vis Gaza, overflight permission.
It would attack Iran from From the west, going over Saudi Arabia, it has facilities in Azerbaijan, bases, Israel does.
All right, we'll continue with that in a moment.
Important considerations here.
Dennis Prager here.
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